henry-vi-quiller

for reference

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KING HENRY THE SIXTH

I

HENRY V. was granted but two years to enjoy his glory.

He lived to see a son born to him ; and with the help of the young Duke of Burgundy who since the treacherous murder of his father by the Armagnacs, had in revenge

flung the full weight of his support on the English side to make himself complete master of Northern France to the

banks of the Loire. When, as regent of France and heir to the crown, he celebrated the feast of Whitsuntide at Paris in the palace of the Louvre the splendour and gaiety of his court far outshone that of the real king. And then, at the height of his fortunes, death claimed him.

---------------------------------

What the disease was is not known. It struck swiftly, baffling the physicians ; and at Vincennes near Paris, on the ist of September, 1422, Henry died. His body was borne home in state and laid in the vaults of Westminster Abbey.

While the echoes of his dead march were still rolling through the Abbey aisles, men's ears caught the murmur of coming trouble. The inheritor of the two heavy sceptres

of England and France (for the mad King Charles had died . a few weeks after his conqueror) was an infant nine months

old, whose welfare, with that of England, was placed in the hands of his uncle Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, as

Protector, and a Council of twenty headed by Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. Another uncle, the Duke

of Bedford a general only inferior in skill to the dead King was made Regent of France.

In other words, the kingly power which Henry IV. had fought so hardly for, and Henry V. had kept and increased

by his own winning qualities and the fame of foreign victories, was now by force of circumstances given back to the great nobles. We shall see how they used it to

wreck their country and in the end to work out their own perdition. The story we have to tell reminds one of the house swept and garnished of the Gospel parable. Such a

house the conqueror of Agincourt had prepared ; his sudden death left it open to a company of evil spirits far " worse

than the first." " The violence and anarchy which had always clung like a taint to the baronage had received a new impulse from the war with France. Long before the

struggle was over it had done its fatal work on the mood of the English noble. His aim had become little more than a lust for gold, a longing after plunder, after the pillage of

farms, the sack of cities, the ransom of captives. So intense was the greed of gain, that only a threat of death could keep

the fighting-men in their ranks, and the results of victory after victory were lost by the anxiety of the conquerors to

deposit their plunder and captives safely at home."*

For a while the firm hand of Bedford kept this mischief in check. Summoned from the funeral rites of his great brother by the first of those messengers of disaster whom

in a short time every wind was to bring across the Channel, he soon gave the French provinces proof that they were

over-hasty in revolting. The Dauphin on his father's death had at once proclaimed himself King with the title of Charles VII., but it was long before he saw the end of the

struggle on which he now entered. Still helped by the Duke of Burgundy,

Bedford reduced the North of France

back to its submission, and nobly upheld the honour of England in the victories of Crevant (1423) and Verneuil

(1424). The latter crushed a daring advance of the French, who had pushed northward from the Loire, which separated

the English from the French provinces, and offered battle on the very borders of Normandy most rashly, for they

were hurled back leaving a third of their knighthood on the field. In this moment of their utter discomfiture Bedford

should have thrown his troops across the Loire. He did not, and the reason why he did not is to be found at home. The Protector, "the good" but certainly not too good "Duke Humphrey," was at loggerheads with the

Council from the first, and especially with its president,Henry Beaufort, a rich, ambitious, and quite unscrupulous

churchman, son of John of Gaunt by a second marriage.

The hatred of these two men broke into fierce words evenover the coffin of the late King.

" Cease your wranglings

and live at peace !" Bedford had implored them ; but with Bedford away in France they paid little heed to his counsel.

By Henry's will Gloucester should have been Regent of England as well as Protector. By Beaufort's influence in the Council he was refused the title. The serving men of

the two nobles Gloucester's in blue and Beaufort's in tawny livery never met without a skirmish ; they flourished clubs and hurled paving-stones in the very streets of London, to the sore scandal of the Lord Mayor and all peaceable citizens ; they brawled, and their masters bandied insults and threats in the presence of the boy-king, who already began to show a gentle, timorous nature, devout, wishing well to

all men, but weak and quite unfit to rule least of all to rule the selfish and turbulent crowd which surrounded him.

Utterly selfish it was, every man in it ;

the "good Duke Humphrey

" no less than the rest. Sick of the Protectorate, in which the Council persistently tied his hands, Gloucester

sought his own ambition abroad. He had married Jacqueline of Bavaria, the divorced wife of the Duke of Brabant,

and claimed a large portion of the Netherlands as her inheritance. The Duke, her first husband, opposed this claim,

and was supported by the Duke of Burgundy, who looked

upon himself as Brabant's heir.

For Gloucester to persist in his claim meant estranging the Duke of Burgundy from

the English alliance, a most serious loss.

But England's interest came second to her Lord Protector's. He himself soon had enough of the struggle ; but it dragged on for three years, and meanwhile Bedford had to sit helpless before the chance of a splendid success, and watch his late allies the Burgundians marching away from him to fight his brother.

Even without them he might have done much, had the quarrels of Gloucester and Beaufort at home allowed them

time to provide him with the supplies of men and money he begged for. It was not until 1428 that, peace being restored

in Holland and the Duke of Burgundy once more free to help his old allies, it was resolved to push southward across the

Loire and reduce the provinces owning the sway of Charles.

The English had let their golden opportunity slip ; but for all their fortunate delay the plight of the Dauphin, as we may yet call him, was very nearly desperate. As his

first step, Bedford laid siege to Orleans, and while he invested it with ten thousand men Charles had to look on and own himself powerless to relieve the city. The besieged

themselves lay under a spell of terror, cowed, as it were, by the names of Bedford and his two gallant lieutenants, the

Earl of Salisbury and Lord Talbot. Behind the English all the North of France, as far eastward as the border of Lorraine, lay ravaged and starving, the crops burnt, the

peasantry destitute.

It was from Domremy, a village near that Lorraine border, that, while Orleans meditated surrender and Charles had shut himself up at Chinon to weep helplessly, help arosefor France ;

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a girl to put courage into a nation of men, a saint to match her unselfish devotion against the utter selfishness

guiding the counsels of England, and against all expectation, almost against hope, to perform the miracle and win.

Jeanne d'Arc, or Joan of Arc, as we call her, was a shepherd's daughter in this village of Domremy, at the foot of the wooded slopes climbing towards the Vosges mountains.

She was a dreamy child, fond of wandering alone in these woods, and making friends with the birds and wild creatures

she met ; the folk at home saw nothing more in her than " a good girl, simple and pleasant in her ways," fonder of

indoor tasks than of work in the fields, tender towards all suffering, very devout, a child living very near to God, and loving Him passionately.

The war, of which she had heard echoes in the talk of the villagers, but very vague echoes, came sweeping by Domremy

at length. Then she knew what it meant, saw the ruin and misery it left in its wake, and while she nursed the wounded her heart swelled with pity for France.

It seems a little thing, pity in the heart of one peasant girl among thousands who saw this war and suffered from it. But there lies the miracle ; it was a little thing. While

she brooded she recalled an old prophecy that a maid from the Lorraine border should arise and save the land. In her

walks now she saw visions the mother of God walking between the trees ; St. Michael standing in a slant of light between the green boughs and calling on her to save

France ; there was pity in Heaven (said he) for the failrealm of France. How might she save France ?

"

Messire,

I am but a poor maiden ; I know not how to ride to the

wars or to lead men-at-arms."

She thought with shuddering of warfare and wounds ; she shrank even from facing

the rough men of the camp with their coarse greetings and brutal oaths. Yet her duty led thither, and lay plain before

her " I must go to the King." Her parents threatened, the villagers mocked her. " It is no will of mine to go,"

she pleaded ;

" I had far rather stay here among you. But

I must go to the King, even if I wear my legs to the knees."

At length the captain of the near town of Vaucouleurs took her by the hand, and swore to lead her to Charles. At

Chinon the Churchmen refused to believe in her mission, but she won her way to the Dauphin at length, and he

received her in the midst of his despairing nobles. " Gentle Dauphin," said she,

" my name is Joan the Maid. The

heavenly King sends me to tell you that you shall be anointed and crowned in the town of Rheims, to be lieutenant of Himself who is the King of France."

Had his case been only a little less desperate, the Dauphin would no doubt have dismissed her lightly. As

it was, his French were so completely cowed by past defeats, and stood in such awe of the very names of madbrained

Salisbury and Talbot who, made prisoner in an engagement when the odds against him were four to one, had effected his ransom, and taken the field again more

fiercely than ever, that even though the English before Orleans numbered but three thousand, the swarms of soldiery in the starving city dared not come out and fight.

The coming of Joan broke this spell.

Riding at the head of ten thousand men, clad cap-a-pie in white armour, with

the great white banner of France studded with fieur-de-lys waving above her, she appeared to the citizens of Orleans

as an angel from heaven. " I bring you," she told Dunois, the commander of the besieged, as "he sallied out to greet

her," the best aid ever sent, the aid of the heavenly King."

Scarcely opposed, she rode in through the gates and round the walls, bidding the citizens look on the ring of English

forts and fear them no longer. The French Generals plucked up heart and marched out to the attack.

Salisbury had already fallen, killed by a shot as he surveyed Orleans from one of the forts. Talbot fought like a lion, but was

utterly outnumbered. The French reduced fort after fort. Joan herself fell wounded before the last and strongest.

They carried her into a vineyard, and Dunois would have sounded the retreat. " Not yet ! As soon as my standard

touches the walls you shall enter the fort." It touched, and the French burst in. Orleans was saved.

Talbot, however, was not the leader to be daunted by a single reverse, nor could the spell his prowess had built up be destroyed so summarily. Famous stories gathered

about his name as they now began to gather about Joan.

One ran that the Countess of Auvergne, professing a wish to see and speak with so renowned a warrior, invited him

to pay her a visit and accept the hospitality of her castle.

Talbot obeyed, and arriving was led to the Countess, who had given orders to lock and bar all the doors behind him.

" What ! is this the man ?" was her greeting.

" Is this the redoubtable Talbot, the scourge of France ? I looked to have seen a Hercules, or a Hector at least ; not this puny

fellow." "Madam," answered Talbot, but moderately abashed,

"

it is plain that I have come at an unwelcome

moment ; I must take leave of you and choose some fitter occasion." " Take leave ? No, my lord, excuse me, you

are my prisoner." Talbot laughed.

" Your ladyship should have chosen Talbot's substance, not his shadow, to

treat so severely."

" Why, are you not Talbot ?"

"I am indeed ; and yet but the shadow of Talbot. As for his substance He put his horn to his lips and blew, and at once, with beat of drums, his soldiers came bursting

through the gates and poured into the castle.

"These,madam, are Talbot's substance." The discomfited lady sued for mercy.

"Nay, you have not offended me. Some

food and wine for my soldiers will be satisfaction enough."

A warrior of this humour will hardly be persuaded that he is beaten. Even after Joan had entered Orleans with

colours flying, in the midst of the French rejoicings Talbot with his handful of English had escaladed the walls by night and fought his way to the market-place. The death of Salisbury, the hero of thirteen battles, called upon him

to be avenged. He had read this command on the face of his great comrade as he bent over him ; and over the body, which had been carried up the scaling-ladder and advanced to the middle of the great square, he could claim that his vow

had been paid by the death of five Frenchmen for every drop

of Salisbury's blood.

Forced from the town, and at length (as

we have seen) from the forts surrounding it, by overwhelming numbers, he withdrew his troops northward in good order.

Until reinforcements arrived he was powerless. But the

French generals still feared him heartily, and, remembering Verneuil, would have remained inactive on the Loire.

Joan refused to hear of this. Her mission was not yet over ; and while the English waited around Paris she left theriver at Giens and marched through Troyes, her army growing as it advanced, to Rheims. Here, with the coronation of Charles, she felt that her promise had been fulfilled.

" The pleasure of God is done," she said, kneeling at the King's feet, and besought leave to go home. She. was told

that she could not be spared yet.

Though far differently inspired, these soldiers of France and England thought first of their duty ; Joan following a

heavenly vision, Talbot fighting under no such lofty enthusiasm, but doggedly and as a man should who loves hiscountry.

The selfishness lay at home in England with the wrangling nobles who kept him short of supplies ; and among these was one whose growing ambitions, secretly nursed as yet, were to cost England even more dear than

the disputes which already weakened her fighting arm.

-----------------

We have seen that when Henry IV. deposed Richard and seized the throne, he was not the true heir to it even after Richard's death. The true heirship rested with the

Mortimers, descended from Edward III.'s third son, Lionel,Duke of Clarence ; whereas the house of Lancaster descended from his fourth son John of Gaunt. This fault in their succession they had cause enough to bear in mind, and fear that one day it would come to be paid for. It had

been in Henry's mind when he prayed before Agincourt, " Not to-day, O Lord !"

The day, though for long averted, was coming. The last of the Mortimers, Earls of March, lay wasting to death

in the Tower of London ; but his sister, Ann Mortimer,had married Richard, Earl of Cambridge, son of the old

Duke of York who so feebly defended the kingdom from Bolingbroke ; and thus in her son, Richard Plantagenet,

were united the two lines of Mortimer and York, both derived from Edward III., and the elder claiming the true

succession to the throne.

He was heir, too, to a great revenge ; for his father, the Earl of Cambridge, had been one of the three whose

treason Henry V. had discovered on the eve of sailing from Southampton* (and we can guess at what the husband of

Ann Mortimer would be aiming). His death and attainder left his son without title ; but Richard meant to get his title and his revenge too, in time.

Meanwhile he must walk warily, for to all appearances the odds were heavy against him. The house of Lancaster

had possession which is proverbially nine points of the law and a record of three reigns in unbroken succession,

one at least a reign of which England was proud. For all their differences, the rulers of the state were Lancastrian to

a man, and Lancastrian by birth. Gloucester and Bedford were the King's uncles. Beaufort, now created a Cardinal,

was a son of John of Gaunt, and only a little below him in influence came another Beaufort, his nephew the Duke of

Somerset. These Beauforts, moreover, had a game of their own to play. Though belonging to a junior branch of

Lancaster, and barred from the succession by a special clause in the Act which confirmed the marriage of John of

Gaunt with their ancestress Katharine Swynford, they had hopes that, should the young King leave no heir, their

claim would be made good

----------------------------------------------------

.f The Beauforts, therefore,

were the last to whom Richard could look for help. There remained two powerful nobles, who might or might not be

of service to him the Earls of Suffolk and Warwick.

Both were astute, ambitious, selfish ; each sought his own increase and sought it along his own path. It remained for Richard to see if those paths would run for a time

with his.

A quarrel with the young Earl of Somerset in the Temple

Hall " where now the studious lawyers have their bowers "

brought this to the test. No fitter spot could have been found for setting forward Richard Plantagenet's claim,

which rested on law. Stung by a taunt of the heir of the Beauforts in the presence of Suffolk, Warwick, and others,

Richard lost control of his tongue and spoke boldly of his rights. The argument grew loud, and at Suffolk's suggestion they left the hall and walked out into the quiet

garden by the river, where each disputant appealed in turn

to his hearers. But the hearers felt they were on ticklish and dangerous ground. Suffolk evaded Richard's appeal.

"

Faith," said Warwick, " ask me to judge between two hounds, two swords, two horses, two girls, and I may have

something to say ; but these nice sharp quillets of the law are beyond me."

" Since you are tongue-tied then," said

Richard," leave words alone and proclaim your thoughts by token. Let him who values his birth as a true-born gentleman, if he believes there is truth in my plea, join me

in plucking a white rose off this briar." "

Ay," answered Somerset,

" and let him who is neither coward nor flatterer,but dares to take sides with truth, pluck here a red rose with me."

Warwick plucked a white rose,

Suffolk a red.

A gentleman called Vernon who stood by chose a white rose, and a lawyer of the party did the same ;

"

for," said he,

" unless my study and my books tell me false, the Earl of Somerset's argument will not hold." "Now where is

your argument ?" Richard asked tauntingly.

" Here in my scabbard," answered Somerset;

" and it meditates

which shall dye your white rose crimson." The dispute broke out afresh, and Warwick and Suffolk found themselves drawn into it. Somerset took his stand on the death

and attainder of Richard's father.

Richard insisted that his father had been no traitor,

" and that I will prove on better

men than Somerset." The champions of the red rose with drew from the garden, uttering defiance. " This slur they

cast on your house," promised Warwick, " shall be wiped out speedily. The King has summoned his Parliament to

patch up a truce between Gloucester and Beaufort ; and if he do not then and there make thee Duke of York, my name

shall no longer be Warwick." Pinning on their white roses, Richard's supporters left the garden.

Warwick was as good as his word. But before Parliament met, Richard had visited the Tower and received a blessing from the lips of his dying uncle Mortimer. The

unhappy prisoner, whose youth had flowered and wasted behind bars, rehearsed the woes of his house. " I am

childless, dying ; thou art my heir, but tread warily. I ask for no mourning, only see to my funeral. And so farewell,depart with fair hopes and prosper !"

Death had quenched Edmund Mortimer's "

dusky torch before his nephew hurried to the Parliament House, where

the young King was attempting once more the endless business of reconciling Gloucester and the Cardinal. This time

he indeed persuaded them to shake hands, but only after an open brawl which proved how little they respected their

sovereign's presence ; and the Cardinal, at any rate, had no intention of keeping his promise. Richard's turn came after

this difficulty had been composed. Warwick presented a petition for his restoration to title and inheritance; the Protector joined in urging it. Henry gave way readily.

" I grant it, with all the inheritance belonging to the house of York." Richard vowed obedience till death.

"Stoop, then ;

set your knee against my foot. For this homage I gird thee with the sword of thy house, and bid thee rise, Duke of York."

--------------------------

Henry had a special reason just now for desiring concord

among his nobles, being on the point of crossing the sea to

Paris, there to be crowned King of France in answer to

Charles's coronation at Rheims. But their amity was as

insincere and short lived as the homage of York, between

whom and Somerset the feud of the two roses broke out in

sharp words during the hollow ceremony.

No ceremony could have been hollower, for the English

cause in France was doomed already, and soon to be doubly

doomed by a hateful crime. Joan of Arc had been detained

in the French court while the towns in the north opened

their gates to Charles. But Bedford, relieved by the efforts

of Cardinal Beaufort, who poured his own wealth into the

English treasury to raise fresh troops, took the offensive in

his turn and drove Charles back behind the Loire, while the

Duke of Burgundy set about reducing the revolted towns.

This new call brought Joan upon the scene again. Her

mission from God had ended, as she felt, at Rheims. But

she could be brave still, and she still led the French ranks

gallantly, until in a sortie from the city of Compiegne she

was pulled from her horse by an archer and made prisoner.

Her captors sold her to Burgundy, and he in his turn to the

English. To them she was a sorceress and her triumphs

procured by the Evil One. After a year's imprisonment

she was tried as a witch before an ecclesiastical court pre

sided over by the Bishop of Beauvais. Their questions

failed to entangle her. They forbade her the mass. " Our

Lord can make me hear it without your aid," she told them,

weeping. That she was a witch she denied to the last.

" God has always been my Lord in all that I have done.

The devil has never had any power over me." In the end

they condemned her. A pile of faggots was raised in the

market-place of Rouen, where her statue stands to-day.

The brutal soldiers tore her from the hands of the clergy

and hurried her to the stake, but their tongues fell silent at

her beautiful composure. One even handed her a cross he

15

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226 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

had patched together with two rough sticks. She clasped

it as the flames rose about her. " Yes!" she cried ;

" my

voices were of God!" and with those triumphant words the

head of this incomparable martyr sank on her breast. " We

are lost," muttered an English soldier standing in the crowd;

" we have burned a saint."

Burgundy, who had sold her, was already wavering.

Very tenderly Joan had pleaded with him in a parley for

France, and against the unnatural wounds he inflicted on

France. " Consider her, thine own country, France once

so fertile ! Consider her towns and cities defaced, her wast

ing ruin. As a mother looks on her dying babe, so look

upon France as she pines to death." And to Burgundy her

words might well have brought echoes of a day when he

himself had pleaded for France with Henry V., painting the

decay of her husbandry and the savage misery of her in

habitants. It had taxed all the diplomacy of Beaufort to

pin him so long to the English cause. But even the

Cardinal's persuasions failed in the end, and soon after

Joan's death the Duke deserted back to Charles, This

blow was followed by a second and yet more fatal one in

the death of Bedford. Paris rose, drove out its garrison of

English, and declared for Charles. The English possessions

shrank at once to Normandy, portions of Anjou and Picardy,

and Maine. At home the policy of England was distracted

between Gloucester, who strove to continue the war, and

Suffolk, who, following his own ambitious career, had

become master of the Council when age and infirmity forced

Beaufort to give over the active conduct of affairs, and was

now scheming for peace. Abroad, York had succeeded

Bedford as Regent of France, but was hampered at every

turn by his deadly foe, Somerset. If Talbot, now Earl of

Shrewsbury, had been supported, our tale might have been

a different one. He fought a hopeless cause with magnifi

cent courage, at one time fording the Somme with the waters

up to his chin to relieve Crotoy, at another forcing the

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 227

passage of the Oise in face of a whole French army. Driven

from Normandy, which in 1450 was wholly lost, he sailed

for the south and landed in Gascony. Twenty thousand

men should have followed to reinforce him, but were delayed,

and while Somerset hung back in spite against York, Talbot

found himself confronted before Bordeaux by an overwhelm

ing army of French. " The feast of death is prepared,"

said he ; and turning to his son, young John Talbot, bade

him mount his swiftest horse and escape. Hotly the young

man refused. "Is my name Talbot ? Am I your son, and

you ask me to fly ?" " To stay means death for both of us."

" Then let me be the one to stay. By flight I can save

nothing of Talbot but will be a shame to me." Father and

son embraced and made ready to die together. Far from

help, yet not too far if Somerset had made haste with his

cavalry, the fighting Earl saw his troops mown down in

swathes by the French cannon, and charging into the press

rescued his son from the sword of Orleans. " Art not weary,

John ? There is time yet. Fly and avenge me." " Talbot's

son," was the answer,

" will die beside Talbot." In the

next charge the Earl fell, and the lad rushed forward after

his assailants. Some soldiers brought back his body and

laid it in the arms of his dying father. " Now I am content.

My old arms are my boy's grave." So passed indignant

from France to heaven the last surviving spirit of Agincourt

Elsewhere the end had been ignoble enough. The young

King had his will counted detested the war. To his

pious and contemplative nature such strife between peoples

of one faith was abhorrent. Gloucester, awake at length to

the hopelessness of the struggle, was for accepting the

intervention of the Pope and the Emperor, concluding

peace on good terms, and sealing it by a marriage between

Henry and the daughter of the Earl of Armagnac. This,

however, did not suit his opponent, Suffolk, who had a

scheme of his own for marrying Henry to Margaret,

daughter of Reignier Duke of Anjou and titular King of

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228 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

Naples a beautiful and almost penniless lady with whom,

indeed, Suffolk himself had fallen more than half in love.

In wooing her for his sovereign his tongue now and then

spoke for his own heart. But if fond, he was above all

things ambitious. Her being Queen of England would not

prevent his paying court to her, while it would give her

power to support his schemes. Reignier was a grasping

father and drove a hard bargain, naming nothing less as the

price of the match than the cession of Anjou (which by this

time was not England's to give) and Maine, which Suffolk

knew well to be the key of Normandy. To Suffolk this

weighed little in comparison with his private advantage.

He posted back to England and plied Henry and the

Council with his praises of Margaret's beauty. Gloucester

was outvoted again, and the contract with the Earl of

Armagnac broke off. Henry listened wearily to their

wrangling. "I am sick," said he, "with too much think

ing." He had lost his father's conquests. Even the great

southern province which had belonged to England ever

since Henry II. had married Eleanor of Aquitaine was

preparing to pass from him. If peace could be purchased

by ceding Anjou and Maine, he was ready to spare them.

Marriage he did not desire, yet (as he told Gloucester)

would be content with any choice tending to God's glory

and England's welfare. His mind, utterly irresolute, was

sensitive enough to be distracted by these perpetual quarrels ;

and in this condition, as weak men will, he decided suddenly,

almost pettishly ; despatched Suffolk to France to arrange

the betrothal with Margaret ; in the very act of disregarding

his advice, begged Gloucester to excuse this sudden enforce

ment of " my will

"

; and withdrew from the Council to shut

himself up and meditate on the cares which afflict a king.

So Suffolk departed triumphant, following a vision of still

greater personal triumphs. Margaret should be Queen and

rule Henry ; but Suffolk should rule her, and through her

the King and the whole realm.

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 229

II

But one thing Suffolk had left out of account, the temper

of the English people. He and his peers might treat the

national honour as a chattel to be bartered for their

private ends ; but the mass of his countrymen had learnt

under Henry V. to be proud of England, and this pride

broke into furious resentment when they saw her greatness

dishonoured by weak hands and trafficked away with a

selfish unconcern. Duke Humphrey might be an imperfect

patriot, but he was for continuing the fight rather than

surrendering on such terms. When Suffolk brought

Margaret home to London in state, the Protector's voice

faltered as he read over the contract. At the clause ceding

Anjou and Maine he fairly broke down.

The Cardinal, Suffolk's chief supporter, took the scroll

from him and read on. Henry listened, professed himself

well pleased with the bargain, and made Suffolk a duke for

his services. He had no sooner withdrawn, however, with

Margaret and her conductor to prepare for the coronation,

than Duke Humphrey found speech. "What! was it for

this my brother Henry spent all his youth, his valour,

money, and men, lodging in the open field, winter and

summer, to conquer France ? Was it for this my brother

Bedford laboured with his wits to keep what Henry had

won ? Yourselves Somerset, Buckingham, York, Salis

bury, Warwick have earned honourable scars, while the

Cardinal and I have sat toiling in Council early and late,

and all to keep France. Is this to be the undoing and

shameful end of your prowess and our policy ?"

He had England behind him in speaking so ; but the

conscience of Englishmen had not yet discovered how to

make itself heard. For the moment he spoke to men of

opposing aims, and they listened with very different minds.

Beaufort, his old enemy, openly censured his boldness ; but

then Beaufort's interest lay with the King's party and the

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230 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

new favourite, Suffolk. Somerset and Buckingham (another

duke of the blood royal, descended from Thomas of

Gloucester, the youngest of Edward III.'s sons) distrusted

the Cardinal as their rival in craft, but were more concerned

just now in hating and scheming against Duke Humphrey,

the actual Protector, and were ready to join forces to pull

him down from his seat. That Somerset took one side was

reason enough for York's taking the other. But York,

we must remember, considered himself the rightful heir to

the throne, and that these were his dukedoms which Suffolk

had given away. Warwick and his father Salisbury,* as

supporters of York, were angry on his account, and also

indignant at the loss of provinces they had helped to win.

For the moment,, then, these diverse factions fall into

two. On the one hand we see Gloucester, supported by

York, Salisbury, and Warwick, all indignant at the King's

marriage and the bargain it stood for, and representing in

this the general silent feeling of England. On the other we

have Suffolk, who made the bargain, favoured by the

Queen, upheld by the Cardinal, and joined by Somerset and

Buckingham, for the present purpose of unseating and

destroying Gloucester.

And for the moment this second party could use the King's

favour, and so held the upper hand. The stroke against

Duke Humphrey must be dealt, and quickly ; but how ?

They found their opening in the indiscretion of his second

wife, Eleanor Cobham. This aspiring dame was guessed,

* To show the descent of the King-maker, we may extend the table

given on p. 222, thus

John of Gaunt-pKaiharine Svvynford.

. KING HENRY THE SIXTH 231

and shrewdly enough, to nurse ambitions which flew higher

than her husband's. She was a good hater, at any rate, and

found a hater to match her in the young Queen, with whom

she soon started a fierce quarrel. It maddened Margaret

to see Gloucester's wife parading the Court with a troop of

ladies and a duchy's revenue on her back, flaunting her

riches, and not careful to hide her disdain of the penniless

upstart from Anjou. She had boasted (so Margaret heard)

that the train of her meanest gown outvalued all the Duke

Reignier's estates. It was a woman's quarrel, and the storm

burst in a very feminine fashion. Somerset and York were

quarrelling again; this time over their claims to be regent

over what remained of French territory. York, who had

held the office, looked to be reappointed. Somerset opposed

him. Duke Humphrey supported York. "Why should

Somerset be preferred ?" was the natural question urged by

the Protector's party.

"

Because," answered Margaret im

periously,

" the King will have it so." " Madam," replied

Gloucester,

" if so, the King is old enough to speak for him

self." "

Then," came the retort,

" if he be old enough, he

does not need you for Protector." "At his pleasure," said

Gloucester,

" I am ready to resign."

"

Resign then !"

broke out the tongues of his enemies in turn Suffolk,

the Cardinal, Somerset, Buckingham, the Queen herself.

Gloucester choked down his rage for the moment and with

drew, not trusting himself to speak. His Duchess remained.

Margaret dropped her fan. " My fan, if you please!" she

commanded, and, as the Duchess delayed to pick it up,

caught her a box in the ear ; then, feigning to have mistaken

her for a maid-in-waiting,

" I cry you mercy, madam. Was

it you ?" The Duchess flounced out promising vengeance.

She meant it too. But Suffolk had already prepared a

trap for her, and when the Queen complained impatiently

of her husband's subjection, Suffolk could promise a speedy

deliverance. " I tell thee, De la Pole," Margaret confessed,

" when I saw thee at Tours riding a tilt in my honour, and

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232 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

stealing away the French ladies' hearts, I thought thy

master had been as brave and handsome and as gallant a

wooer. But his thoughts are all given over to holiness.

His beads and his sacred books are more to his taste than

tilt-yard and weapons, and saints' images all the lady-loves

he cares for." She stamped her foot. " I wish to Heaven

the Cardinals' College would elect him Pope and carry him

off to Rome !" Suffolk besought her to be patient.

" And

as for the Duchess," he promised,

" I have limed a bush for

that bird. When I have caught her, as I presently shall,

never fear that she'll mount again to trouble you."

Eleanor Cobham, in fact, had over-reached herself. Since

her husband would not make a snatch at the crown, she

had set her own wits to work, and tempted by an oppor

tunity which Suffolk cunningly threw in her way, had called

in the help of sorcery. She was now, as her enemy knew,

consulting with Margery Jourdain, a witch, a conjurer

named Bolingbroke, and two priestly confederates, Hume

and Southwell. Hume was actually in Suffolk's pay ; the

rest, it is most likely, were but foolish impostors, who made

a living by trading on superstitious folks. To such knaves

the rich Duchess would be a gold mine, if only they could

keep her bemused by jugglery and specious prophesying.

Unfortunately for them Suffolk proved as prompt in striking

as he was careless of what became of his tools after they

had served him. As soon as ever he felt the moment ripe

he used his information and despatched York and Bucking

ham with a guard to Duke Humphrey's London house.

They broke into the garden and surprised the victims in the

midst of their incantations Margery Jourdain and Boling

broke pretending to raise the Spirit of Evil, while Southwell

took down its answers, and the Duchess, with Hume,

watched from a balcony.

" Lay hands on these traitors

and their trash !" commanded York ; and then glancing

aloft,

" What ! You there, madam ? The King and common

wealth are deeply indebted to you for these pains of

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 233

yours !" The papers seized by the guard contained the

following prophecies :

(1) Of the King

" The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose ;

But him outlive, and die a violent death."

(2) Of Suffolk

" By water shall he die, and take his end."

(3) Of Somerset

" Let him shun castles."

To seek information concerning the King's death was

plainly treasonable. York marched his captives to prison,

and despatched Buckingham post-haste to St. Albans,

where he found Henry hawking and distracted as usual in

the midst of his sport by the quarrelling peers, of whom

Gloucester and the Cardinal were at the moment within an

ace of coming to blows. Buckingham's news, as may be

supposed, wholly confounded the Protector, and fetched the

King hurriedly back to London to inquire into the Duchess's

treason. There was, of course, no defence ; the culprits

had been taken red-handed. Henry pronounced judgment,

sentencing Margery Jourdain to be burned at Smithfield,

Bolingbroke, Southwell, and Hume to be hanged, while the

Duchess saved from the worst by her noble birth was

condemned to do three days' open penance through the

streets of London, and then to live in banishment in the

Isle of Man, under care of the governor, Sir John Stanley.

The day of her penance came, horrible alike for her and

for Duke Humphrey, who on hearing her condemnation

had knelt and with tears rendered up his Protector's staff

into the King's hands. In mourning dress, with his attendants

in black about him, the unhappy husband waited and watched

the street along which his wife came in her degradation.

She came bare-footed, draped in a white sheet pinned with

insulting placards, holding a taper alight. A jeering crowd

followed her. " Are you come, my lord, to look on my open

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redone

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234 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

shame ? It is penance for thee too." She pointed back at

the crowd. " Ah ! Gloucester, hide from their hateful

looks!" "Patience, Nell!" the poor Duke pleaded; "be

patient and forget this grief."

" Teach me, then, to forget

myself. For while I think I am thy wife, and thou art a

prince and ruler of England, methinks I should not be led

along thus ! Ah, Humphrey ! can I bear it ? Believest

thou I shall ever look forth on the world again and deem

it happy to see the sun ! To remember what I was there

will lie the hell : to say ' I am Duke Humphrey's wife.

He was a prince and a ruler of England ; yet so ruled and

was such a prince that he stood by whilst I, his duchess,

was made a shameful jest for the street.' No!" she went

on bitterly,

" be mild as ever ! Do not blush at it ! Stir at

nothing until the axe of death hang over thine own neck

as it will ! For Suffolk, all in all with her who hates thee

and all of us, and York, and the false Cardinal, have set the

snare for thy feet. Go thy way, trusting as ever, and never

seek to prevent them !"

But Gloucester would not believe. "

I must offend before

I can be attainted. Had I twenty times the foes I have ;

had each of them twenty times his present power, I cannot

be harmed while I rest loyal, true, without crime. I beseech

thee, Nell, be patient, and leave this to wear itself quickly

away !"

While he talked with her a herald arrived to summon

him to the King's Parliament, fixed to be held at Bury

St. Edmunds on the first of the next month. u The date fixed !

My consent not asked !" Duke Humphrey forgot that he

was Protector no longer.

" This is close dealing," mused

he, but prepared to obey. Hastily husband and wife took

their sorrowful farewells and parted ; she towards her exile,

he for Bury St. Edmunds, where before his arrival his

enemies were arranging his downfall.

For while Henry wondered at his delay in coming,

Margaret, Suffolk, the Cardinal, and Buckingham were

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 235

together poisoning his ear with evil charges and worse

hints against the late Protector. " Should Henry die now

and without child, Gloucester would be next heir to the

throne." " It was he who must have set his wife upon her

devilish practices." To come to more definite charges :

'He had taken bribes from France." "As Protector he

had visited small offences with savage punishments." "He

had levied money to pay the armies in France and had

never sent it." It was York who brought this last charge ;

for although York had disclosed his aims to Salisbury and

Warwick, and although they had secretly sworn to make

him King of England, he saw more clearly than they that

Duke Humphrey's fate was now sealed, and the time had

come to abandon him. Between them the plotters so

wrought on the weak King, that when Gloucester entered

at length and, wishing the King health, prayed to be

forgiven his delay, Suffolk felt able to step forward boldly

and arrest him of high treason. Duke Humphrey did not

blench. " A clean heart is not easily daunted," said he, and

denied, as he honestly could, the charges his enemies now

repeated against him. " I never robbed the soldiers of any

pay, nor have ever received one penny from France as bribe.

So help me God, I have watched night after night studying

good for England ! If I have stolen one doit from the King,

or hoarded one groat of his for my own use, let it be brought

against me in fair trial. Nay, rather than tax the poor com

mons, I have poured out my own money to pay the garrisons,

and never asked for repayment. As for my punishment of

offenders, it is notorious that my fault, if any, was too great

clemency." Suffolk cut him short. " These are trifles. It

is for heavier crimes I arrest you, and hand you over to my

Lord Cardinal here, who will keep you until your trial."

The hunted man turned to Henry, but Henry could give

little help.

" My lord," said he,

" it is my especial hope

that you will clear yourself of all these suspicions ; for my

conscience assures me you are innocent." " Ah, my liege !

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236 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

I know that they want my life; and if my death could make

England ,happy they would be welcome to it. But my

death is the prologue only. Thousands, who as yet suspect

nothing, will die and yet not conclude the tragedy here

plotted. I see the Cardinal's malice in his red ferret eyes ;

Suffolk's brow clouded with hate ; I hear Buckingham's

sharp tongue unloading his envy ; York dogged as ever

York whose ambitious arm I have held back from the moon

he would grasp levelling false charges against my life. And

you, my sovereign lady

" he turned to Margaret

" have

joined them in stirring up my true liege to hate me. Oh, I

have had notice of your meetings, your conspiracies ! I

shall not lack false witnesses to condemn me!"

Henry stood powerless while the Cardinal's guards hurried

away their prisoner ; then he moved sadly towards the door.

" My lords, I leave it to your wisdom. Do or undo as if I

myself were present."

" What ?" cried Margaret,

" will

your Majesty leave the Parliament ?" "

Ay, Margaret ;

this grief overwhelms me. Gloucester is no traitor ; he

never wronged you, or these great lords, or any man, that

his life should be sought." He could make pretty, touching

speeches about his old friend and counsellor ; but what,

though King of England, he could not do was to find man

hood enough to stand by him. His lamentations proved

that he guessed only too well what was threatened ; yet in

the act of uttering them he was moving towards the door,

and betraying Duke Humphrey to his fate. The savage

and more intrepid hearts he left behind him in the Parlia

ment House had already decided that fate, and were not

long in discovering their agreement. Duke Humphrey

must die.

York was spared whatever small dishonour remained,

after consenting, inactively compassing the murder. While

Gloucester's enemies deliberated, news came of a rebellion

in Ireland, and to York was given the task of shipping an

army at Bristol and sailing to suppress it. He could have

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 237

desired nothing better. It removed him out of the way of

the popular rage which he foresaw would follow the crime.

And it gave him an army, which was precisely what he

lacked. The golden opportunity had arrived, and he grasped

it. He would nurse his army in Ireland and wait, while

Suffolk and the rest did his dirty work and incurred the

odium of it.

For Suffolk was short-sightedly eager to strike. He had

always made the mistake of undervaluing the opinion of

England at large. His strength lay in his favour with

Margaret and the influence this gave him in the narrow

inmost circle around the King. He forgot, or thought he

could neglect, that which no English king even has forgotten

or neglected without disaster. Margaret, as a French-woman,

might be forgiven for ignoring this ; Suffolk's ignorance

belonged to the tradition by which the great feudal lords

treated the commons and their feelings as of no account,

and by which they came to their ruin.

Two murderers hired by Suffolk strangled Duke Humphrey

as he lay sick on his bed at Bury. As the King took his

seat to try the accused, Suffolk, who had been sent to fetch

him, returned with a white face. " He is dead, my lord !

Dead in his bed!" The King swooned back in his chair.

They revived him, and he fell to petulant, weak ravings ;

poor cries of a heart to which grief is half a luxury, some

thing at least to be tasted. Margaret, who spoke up boldly

for her pet Suffolk, would have made short work of this

lamb-like rage; but as she ended a stronger wrath hammered

at the door. A crowd of the commons stood outside. They

had heard of the crime, and they had Salisbury and Warwick

to speak for them and exact vengeance. While Henry wept

impotently, these two nobles thrust themselves in, bearing

the dead body on its bed. " View it, my liege ! See, the

blood black in his face his eyeballs staring, his nostrils

stretched with struggling look on his hands, spread as they

must have grasped for life ! And on the sheets see his

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238 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

hair is yet sticking ! By the Lord who died for men, this is

foul play ! This is Suffolk's work the murderous coward !"

Suffolk and Margaret together hotly denied it. The

favourite had long ago warned his Queen that the Nevils

would have to be reckoned with ; that Salisbury, the father,

and Warwick, the son, were no simple peers ; but as he now

followed Warwick out to make good his denial by the sword,

he found on the further side of the door a more terrible

enemy than the Nevils. The throng there shouted for his

blood, and he could not face it. W7

ith difficulty Salisbury

forced the commons back while he spoke their mind.

" Either Suffolk must be banished, or the crowd would

enter and hale him forth to torture and lingering death. It

was for the King's own sake they insisted, but the King must

choose." " A mob of tinkers !" sneered Suffolk ; but the time

for sneering was past. These despised commons had fixed

his doom for him, and clamoured impatiently while the King

seemed to hesitate. He pronounced it at length. Suffolk

was given three days in which to quit the kingdom for ever.

Margaret flung herself on her knees, but in vain. Henry

had found a will stronger than even hers. This stormy,

masterful woman could love, and she loved Suffolk as he

had loved her from the day he wooed her for the husband

she could neither understand nor respect. Before him she

could be weak, and she wept as she took leave of him. He

would stay, he swore, and face death rather than cry for

death in a foreign land, cry for her to close his eyes and

take his last breath on her lips. But no, she insisted, he

must go and take her heart .with him. Whithersoever he

might wander her messengers should find him out. And

he went, to an exile shorter than either of them guessed.

For the vengeance of Heaven was not tarrying. Already

the Cardinal lay on his death-bed writhing in torments of

conscience, clutching and gasping for breath, now blasphem

ing God and now cursing his fellow-men. Above all, he

kept crying aloud for the King ; but when Henry was

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 239

summoned and stood by his bedside the dying wretch failed

to recognise him. " Death ? Art thou Death ? I'll give

thee all England's treasure enough to purchase another

such island only let me live and feel no pain !" He passed

to wilder ravings. Warwick bent and spoke in his ear ;

"

Beaufort, it is the King come to speak to thee." "

Bring

me to my trial when you will ! He died in bed, did he

not ? Where should he die ? Can I make men live

whether they will or no ? . . . O ! cease torturing ; I will

confess. . . . Alive again ? Show me where he is I'll

give a thousand pounds to have a look. He has no eyes ;

the dust has blinded his eyes ! Comb down his hair !

Look ! look ! it is standing upright ! . . . Give me drink . . .

bring the poison. Where is the poison I bought ? . . ."

Henry, kneeling and praying for the divine mercy on

this terrible end, cried to the Cardinal as he sank into

silence to make some sign to lift a hand in token that his

last thoughts were of heaven. The hand was not lifted.

The breathing ceased. " O God, forgive him ! We are

sinners and may not judge him. Close up his eyes and

draw the curtains."

Vengeance, passing onward from this bedside, overtook

Suffolk as he reached the coast in disguise he dared not

travel openly, knowing the temper of the people. Near

Dover he hired a small craft and put out to sea, trusting to

be allowed a landing at Calais. He had sailed but a little

way when a fleet of armed ships bore down on him.

Forced to heave-to, he was summoned on board the Nicholas

of the Tower, and as he climbed up the side the captain

received him with the words,

" Welcome, traitor !" Two

days later, as the ship hung off the English coast, a boat

came alongside, carrying a headsman, a block, and a rusty

sword. This was the end of Suffolk "by water," as had

been prophesied.* His head was conveyed to Margaret,

* Some found a punning confirmation of the prophecy in the name

of his executioner, a certain Walter (or Water] Whitmore.

----------------------------------------

240?

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240 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

who mourned for it passionately.

" I fear me, love,"

remonstrated Henry,

" thou wouldst not have mourned so

for me had I been dead." "

Nay, my love, I should not

mourn but die for thee."

The ships which seized Suffolk had put out from the

Cinque Ports ; and the men of Kent, who had furnished

them, heard whispers that a terrible revenge was preparing.

They were fiercely discontented, because they had prospered

on the spoil of the French wars and their prosperity was at

an end. Under John Cade, a soldier of some experience in

those wars, they now determined to be beforehand with the

royal anger, and rose in open revolt. There is more than a

suspicion that York had a hand in this rising, though by

reason" of his absence in Ireland his hand did not appear ;

but Cade took the name of Mortimer, and although very

few even of his ignorant followers believed him to be the

true Mortimer, the name was significant.

They were a rough, incoherent crew, having at the

bottom of their discontent a dull sense of injustice a dull

feeling that they were misused, that England was disgraced

by misgovernment, and that somehow these two things

were connected, though they were quite incapable them

selves of reasoning this out. But their sense of it broke

out in a brute rage against the governing class. " It was

never merry world in England since gentlemen came up

"

:

" The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons." Yet as

happens with men of their class, flashes of mother-wit,

narrow but very shrewd and practical, lit up their absurd

arguments ; as when Cade himself except in fighting, as

ignorant as any of them proclaimed that his father was a

Mortimer. " That Mortimer," growled his right-hand man,

Dick the Butcher,

" was an honest man and a good brick

layer." Cade promised a thorough reformation of the

realm. " There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves

sold for a penny ; the three hooped pots shall have ten

hoops ; and I will make it felony to drink small beer.

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 241

When I am king all shall eat and drink and chalk it up to

me, and all shall go dressed in one livery, that they may

agree like brothers and worship me, their lord." " The

first thing we do," suggested Dick,

" let's kill all the

lawyers."

"

Nay," answered Cade, " that I mean to do.

Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an

innocent lamb should be made parchment ? that parchment,

being scribbled over, should undo a man ? Why, I set my

seal once to such a thing and was never my own master

since !" They brought him a prisoner they had taken.

"Who's this?" "The Clerk of Chatham; he can write

and read and cast accounts." " O monstrous !" " We

took him setting of boys' copies."

" Here's a villain !" To

Sir Humphrey Stafford, who came with the King's forces to

suppress the rising, Cade boldly announced himself a

genuine Mortimer, and boldly proceeded to prove it.

" Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, married the daughter

of Lionel Duke of Clarence, hey ? Well, he had two

children, twins, and the elder was stolen away by a beggarwoman

and grew up to be a bricklayer. I am his son, and

you may deny that if you can." "

Indeed, sir," put in a

rebel,

" he made a chimney in my father's house, and the

bricks are alive to this day to testify it. Therefore you

cannot deny it." But Cade could fight better than he could

argue. Stafford, finding persuasion vain, gave battle. His

troops were defeated and himself and his brother slain, and

the rebels marched triumphantly upon London, which they

entered without resistance, Cade cutting the ropes of the

drawbridge with his sword as he passed. Henry and his

court had already escaped to Kenilworth, and for two days

the city lay at the rebels' mercy. Their chief rage, now

that Suffolk had fallen, was against Lord Say, as the royal

adviser most guilty of the surrender of Anjou and Maine.

Him they seized in his London house and brought to a rough

trial an old tottering man shaken with the palsy.

" I'll

see if his head will stand steadier on a pole or no," promised

16

242 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

Cade. He charged Say who denied that he was chargeable

with the loss of Normandy, besides lesser misdemeanours.

" I am the besom that must sweep the court clean of such

filth as thou art. Thou hast most traitorously corrupted

the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school ; and

whereas before our forefathers had no other books but the

score and tally, thou hast caused printing to be used ; and,

contrary to the King's crown and dignity, thou hast built a

paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou hast

men about thee that usually talk of a noun, and a verb, and

such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to

hear !"

Such a little distorted, perhaps, in jest were the charges

brought against Lord Say, and from treason of this sort he

could hardly be expected to clear himself. He was led forth

and executed ; his head set on a pole, and the head of his

son-in-law, Sir John Cromer, on another. The rebels enjoyed

the brutal sport of making the two heads kiss.

But the term of Cade's triumph was a brief one. On the

third day the Londoners, roused by the pillage of their shops

and houses, seized London Bridge and held it gallantly for

six hours. They were relieved by Buckingham and Clifford

of Cumberland, a great noble of the north, who came not

only with troops, but with promises from the King, on the

strength of which they addressed Cade's rabble and promised

pardon to all who dispersed. Cade saw his men wavering.

" Believe them not !" he shouted. " What, has my sword

broken through London gates that you should leave me at

the White Hart in Southwark ?" Clifford, however, knew

the men he was addressing. The King after all was the son

of their adored Harry the Fifth. " Will you by hating him

dishonour his father ? Is Cade a son of King Harry, to lead

you through the heart of France ? Or will you quarrel at

home till the French pluck up heart to cross over the seas

and lord it in London streets ? To France ! and recover

what you have lost!" "A Clifford! a Clifford!" shouted

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 243

the mob ;

" We'll follow the King and Clifford." Cade

turned on them. " Was ever feather so lightly blown to

and fro as this multitude ? The name of Henry the Fifth

will lead them blindfold." While his late followers laid

their heads together to seize him, he broke through their

ranks and escaped, heading southwards. After days of

hiding in the woods of Kent, hunger drove him to break into

the garden of an honest esquire named Iden, who was

rambling in his quiet walks when, to his astonishment,

he came on this scarecrow intruder. Cade, utterly desperate

with famine, showed fight at once, and Iden cut him down

before recognising the rebel. Through this chance en

counter he found himself suddenly the richer by knighthood

and one thousand merks, the price set on the outlaw's head.

But the unhappy Henry had a short relief from his

troubles. "

Never," he lamented,

" did a subject so long to

be a king as I long to be a subject." He was no sooner rid

of Cade, than there arrived the worse news that the Duke of

York had landed with his Irish troops and was marching on

London. York's proclaimed purpose was to remove from

the King's side his inveterate enemy, Somerset, whom he

declared a traitor. Somerset by this time had become a

favourite with Margaret, but York's approach was too

formidable to be defied, and the King had to send word

by Buckingham that his enemy had been removed and

committed to the Tower. This left him no excuse but

to disband his Irish levies, and indeed for a while events

took away all temptation to use force. To be sure, in 1453

a son was born to the King, and this might well have seemed

fatal to the Yorkist chance of succession; but about the

same time Henry sank into a state of idiocy which made his

rule impossible, and York was entrusted with the business

of government under the title of Protector of the Realm.

Margaret, however, who had now her infant, Edward, to

scheme for, waited her time Henry recovered, and his

recovery deprived York of office. She seized this chance to

16 2

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044 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

release Somerset from prison and restore him to his old

power.

" For a thousand Yorks," she boldly announced,

" Somerset shall not hide his head." This was too much.

York denounced it as a breach of faith, denied the King's

fitness to govern, and collecting again his scattered troops,

openly took the field, supported by the Nevils. Clifford's

great power in the north enabled Margaret and Somerset to

get an army together to oppose him and set up the royal

standard at St. Albans.

Upon this camp York marched with Salisbury and

Warwick and a force of thirty thousand men. The battle

which followed, though ostensibly fought over the question

of dismissing Somerset or keeping him in power, was really

the first fought to decide whether the English crown should

go to the White or the Red Rose, and in the blood of

Clifford, whom York slew with his own hand, it sowed a

hatred which, inherited by Clifford's son, was to grow to

a terrible harvest. The death of Somerset on the field, as

the Yorkists swept victorious into St. Albans, removed the

pretended cause of the quarrel. But York had proved his

strength. Henry and Margaret were now in full flight for

London, and thither he must follow with speed. In

London he would learn how to act, would choose his next

step.

Ill

York had four sons, the fortunes of whom we are to

follow Edward, Earl of March, soon to succeed his father

as head of the House of York, and in time to become King

of England and the first soldier of his age ; Edmund, Earl

of Rutland ; George, afterwards Duke of Clarence, the false

and fleeting ; and Richard, the youngest, a hunchbacked lad,

already giving promise of that sinister and malignant genius

which was to carry him to the throne of England, and set

him there in a white glare of hatred, the master-fiend of her

history. In his crooked body, with its colourless, twisted

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 245

face, eyes which repelled and fascinated, and snarling mouth

(he had been born, the tale went, with all his teeth) there

dwelt something of the wild animal, a monster hatched

out of the worst and corruptest passions of Feudal England,

to be its own scourge, and in the end its destroyer. Even as

youth he feared neither God nor man nor devil. He had

started for St. Albans with a blasphemy on his lips ; in the

battle he had thrice rescued the old Earl of Salisbury by his

reckless courage, had cut down Somerset with his own

hand,* and striking off his head, had carried it off and flung

it down before his father in triumph. York gazed on the

features of. his lifelong enemy.

"

Richard," said he,

" has

done best of all my sons." " I hope to shake off King

Henry's head in the same fashion," said Richard.

For this, as for other things, Richard's time was to come,

For the moment he stood in the shadow of another great figure

on the side of the White Rose Richard, Earl of Warwick,

the strongest of the strong Nevils, the "

King-maker," the

" Last of the Barons." Feudalism was doomed, but in

Warwick it died, if not nobly, at any rate magnificently.

He was its fine flower and its grandest type. Heir to the

earldom of Salisbury, he had doubled his wealth and added

the earldom of Warwick by his marriage with the heiress of

the Beauchamps. When he rode to Parliament six hundred

retainers, wearing his badge of the bear and ragged staff,

followed at his heels. Thousands feasted daily in his court-

1

yard. He could raise whole armies from his own earldoms.

In generalship and (some said) in personal courage he might

fall short of York's two sons, Edward and Richard, but he

was an active warrior none the less, and for intrigue and

)litic dealing the first head in the kingdom. In the end

the two lads outplayed him, but for the present he supported

their cause, and it was by his support that in time they

found themselves strong enough to challenge him.

* Under the signboard of the Castle Inn in St. Albans. Those who

will may see in this a confirmation of the prophecy on p. 233.

246 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

This array of power and ability on the Yorkist side would

have left Lancaster weak indeed had it not been for

Margaret. Fierce and implacable as her husband was weak,

she took the place of a man at the head of the Red Rose

faction. Clifford could fight, but it was Margaret who

commanded ; and hereafter whenever success falls to the

arms of Lancaster, it is always Margaret who is in the field,

fighting like a tigress for the rights of her boy, again and

again putting fresh life into her husband, and with un

defeated tenacity lifting a beaten cause and renewing the

struggle.

For a brief while after the battle of St. Albans a return of

the King's malady gave the two parties a respite. York

became Protector again, and Margaret pretended, at least,

to be reconciled. But once more Henry's recovery raised

the question

" Who, after all, is to rule England ?" and in

1460 York took the bold course and openly, in the presence

of Parliament, asserted that the crown belonged to him.

" My father was King," protested Henry,

" and my grand

father was King by conquest." "Not so," answered York,

"

by rebellion." There, of course, lay the weakness of the

Lancastrian title. " But a king may adopt an heir, and

Richard in the presence of many nobles resigned the crown

to my grandfather." "Yes, under force. Now, as well as

right, we have force on our side." Warwick stamped his

foot, and the Parliament house was filled in a minute with

soldiers. " Let me reign for my lifetime," pleaded Henry,

too weak either to be a true king or to resign with a good

grace. On this ground a compact was patched up. Henry

should be allowed to reign during his life, and the crown

should then pass to York and his heirs.

Young Clifford and the other barons of the north were

furious at Henry's faint-hearted bargain, and marched out

of the Parliament rather than consent to it. But their fury

was nothing to Margaret's when the word came to her that

her darling son had been disinherited. " Wretched man,"

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 247

she broke out,

" would I had never seen thee ! '.Enforced '?

What! art thou a King and wilt consent to be forced

consent to reign on sufferance with York for Protector,

Warwick for Chancellor and lord of Calais, and his uncle

Falconberg in command of the Channel ? Had I been

there I, a silly woman Warwick's soldiers should have

tossed me on their pikes before I let them disinherit my boy.

Until that compact be repealed thou art no husband of mine.

The northern lords have forsworn thy colours ; they shall

follow mine. Come, my son, let us leave this talker !"

Poor Henry sat down to write letters entreating Clifford

and the rest not to forsake him. But Margaret called

on their loyalty in a more heroic fashion, and seeing her take

the field Clifford raised the royal standard for her in the

northern shires, while the new Duke of Somerset levied an

army in the west. York, leaving Warwick in London to

watch over the King, hastily gathered a force and marched

northward until he encountered Clifford's army at Wakefield

in Yorkshire. There he found himself outnumbered by four

to one, and disaster fell on the White Rose. His second

son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, wandering the battlefield in

charge of a tutor, fell into Clifford's hands. While the

soldiers hurried away his protector, the poor boy begged for

life. But Clifford had taken an oath of vengeance.

" Thy

father slew my father," was the answer, "so will I kill thee."

And he drove his dagger into the young breast.

York's hour, too, was at hand. His two sons, Edward

and Richard, fighting beside him, had made a lane for him

through his foes, shouting,

"

Courage, father ! fight it out !"

But as their overmatched troops broke and fled, father and

sons were swept apart, and at length the Duke found him

self, faint and alone, hedged around by his deadly enemies.

He could hope for no quarter. But Margaret held back

Clifford's sword while she made her prisoner taste the full

bitterness of death. She enthroned him on a molehill this

man who had reached at mountains. " Where are your

248 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

sons now, to back you ? wanton Edward and lusty

George, and your boy Dicky, that crookback prodigy ?

Where is your darling, your Rutland ? Look, York," she

held out a crimsoned napkin,

" I dipped this in your boy's

blood. If you have tears for him, take this and wipe your

eyes." They called on him to weep for their sport. They

brought a paper crown and set it on him. "

Marry, now he

looks like a king !" Clifford, in his father's memory, claimed

the privilege of dealing the death-stroke. The doomed

man's indignant protest moved even his enemy Northumber

land to pity.

" Woman, worse than tiger, I take thy cloth

and wash my sweet boy's blood from it with my tears. So,

keep it. Go boast of it, and have in thine own hour of need

such comfort as thou art offering me!" Margaret had no

pity. She taunted Northumberland's compassionate weak

ness. With her own dagger she followed up Clifford's

stroke. " Off with his head ! Set it on York gates, and let

York overlook his city of York !"

It was in Herefordshire, near Mortimer's Cross, that news

of York's fate reached his sons. Young Edward was

hurrying to avenge the reverse at Wakefield with the army

collected by Somerset in the west ; and the soldiers told of

an omen, an apparition at dayrise of three suns which, after

shining separate for a while in the clear sky, joined and

melted into one. The three heirs of York read it as promis

ing them a triple yet united glory, and Edward from that

time took three suns for the cognizance of his arms. It was

Richard who recovered first from the blow of the heavy

tidings.

" Tears are for babes. I choose blows and revenge.

As I bear my father's name, I'll avenge him."

In Herefordshire they were met by Warwick, who on

learning the issue of the fight at Wakefield, guessing that

Margaret's next move would be on London to rescue the

King from his keeping, had promptly collected a force of

Kentishmen and marched out to oppose her. For the

second time St. Albans had seen a conflict between the Red

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 249

and White Roses, but after a fierce day's fighting the

Yorkist forces had broken under cover of the night, and

Henry fallen again into the hands of his own party.

Such was the tale brought by Warwick, who had collected

his broken regiments and marched post-haste to join with

young Edward's fresh forces. The tidings might have

been fatal .had not Margaret paused in her march upon

London to indulge her thirst for vengeance in a savage

butchery of prisoners, and allowed her northerners to scatter

for pillage. As it was, Edward had just time to overthrow

a body of Lancastrians barring his way at Mortimer's Cross,

and hurrying forward to dash into London ahead of her.

It was a stroke which proved him a born general. The

citizens received him with shouts of " Long live King

Edward !" as a gallant handsome youth of nineteen he

rode along their streets. Margaret and her army fell back

sullenly upon their northern headquarters at York, where

Henry winced at the sight of his late enemy's head impaled

over the gate. Edward, now secure of the support of the

capital, lost no time in hurrying with Warwick to compel

them to a decisive battle.

A parley at York between the leaders ended as usual in

open threats and defiance, and the two armies met on

Towton Field, near Tadcaster, to contest the bloodiest and

most obstinate battle fought in England since Hastings.

Together the armies numbered almost a hundred and twenty

thousand men, and from daybreak, when the Yorkists

advanced to the charge through blinding snow, for six hours

the tide of success swayed to and fro undecisively. At one

moment Warwick, as his men gave ground and their com

manders began to consult gloomily, stabbed his horse before

their eyes, and, kneeling, swore on the cross of his swordhilt

to revenge his brother (borne down and thrust through

by Clifford) or to die on the field.

As the daylight grew, Henry, the unwilling cause of all

this carnage, wandered forth on the outskirts of the fight,

250

----------------------------------

250 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

Margaret and Clifford had chidden him back out of danger,

swearing that they prospered best when relieved of his

presence. Seating himself on a hummock just such a

molehill as that on which York had been mockingly en

throned in kinship scarcely less impotent and forlorn, he

watched the ebb and flow of the battle. " Let the victory

go to whom God wills it ! Would that, by God's good will,

I were dead !" Heartily he envied a shepherd's lot in just

such a pastoral land as this, which, but for him, had been

bloodless and smiling. To sit upon just such a hill, in the

hawthorn shade, and carve out rustic dials while his sheep

browsed that to this gentlest of monarchs seemed true

happiness. And while he sat he saw and understood what

this horrible civil war meant for pastoral England, a war in

which, forced by no will of their own to take sides, sons

slew their fathers and fathers their sons. While at a little

distance slayers such as these lamented over their slain,

Henry wept for the unnatural error of it all.

At length Norfolk arriving with reinforcements turned the

scale in favour of the White Rose. The Lancastrians were

beaten back to the river which lay in their rear, and there

the retreat became a rout. No quarter was given. All that

night and through the next day the killing went forward.

Clifford, desperately wounded, died before his enemies could

overtake him, but the sons of York seized the body and

exulted over the man who had slain their father and brother,

and set his head to decorate the gates of York in its turn.

Twenty thousand Lancastrians lay dead on the field, and

almost as many Yorkists ; but the victory made Edward

king for the time beyond dispute. Henry and Margaret

escaped over the Scottish border, Somerset into exile.

Northumberland was dead. Devonshire and Wiltshire

followed him as soon as the murderous reprisals began.

Edward created his brother George Duke of Clarence, and

Richard Duke of Gloucester. Richard had wished the

dukedom of Clarence for himself. " That of Gloucester is

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 251

too ominous," said he, between earnest and a jesting glance

at the fate of Duke Humphrey. He took it, however, and

waited his time for something better.

Edward was now Edward IV., crowned King of England,

and could reign for a time in something like security. Yet

Margaret kept up the struggle.' Leaving Henry in Scotland,

which had been their refuge after the disaster of Towton,

she crossed back over the border and stirred up the north

to a new rising, only to be crushed by Warwick at Hedgeley

Moor and again at Hexham. Still indomitable, she set sail

for France to beg help from the young king Lewis XI. ;

and there met face to face again with her enemy Warwick,

who had come upon a rival mission.

Warwick by this time had reached the height of his

power. He was Lord Admiral of England, and maintained

in the Channel ports a fleet devoted to his service. He

was Captain of Calais and Warden of the Western Marches.

A brother, Lord Montague, ruled the northern border ; a

younger brother was Archbishop of York and Lord Chan

cellor ; while his uncles Lords Falconberg, Abergavenny,

and Latimer had all drawn rich spoils from the Yorkist

triumph.

But if for three years the King-maker seemed all-powerful,

the King (as his march on London had proved) was no

Henry, but a young man of brain and will, and a leader

of men. In private life abominably dissolute, and to all

appearance an idler, a lover of costly wines and meats, a

follower of vicious pleasures which in the end bloated his

body and killed him before his time, amid these pursuits

he could scheme as cunningly as Warwick, and when war

summoned him it found him always the first general of

his age.

Sooner or later between these two strong men the struggle

was bound to come. It began silently, and Edward struck

his first blow when Warwick was absent in France nego

tiating for him a marriage with the Lady Bona, sister of

252 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

the French Queen. Lewis found himself between two

petitioners; on the one side Margaret, passionately plead

ing for aid to restore her boy to the throne ; on the other

Warwick, temptingly offering a rich alliance with the actual

King of England. Even poor Henry in his Scottish hiding

could forecast how the contest would go, Margaret had

come to beg, Warwick to give. Lewis might pity the

weaker side, but he would surely decide for the stronger.

So indeed he did, but in the act of deciding he was in

terrupted by news from England. Edward had flouted

Warwick and made his mission idle by privately marrying

Dame Elizabeth Grey, the widow of a slain Lancastrian

and daughter of a knight named Woodville. The King's

brothers resented the match ; but while Clarence openly in

veighed against it, Richard kept a stiller tongue in his head.

An heir to Edward, should one be born, would be one more

life between him and the crown on which he had set his

heart ; but what was done could not be undone. He would

have the crown, with time and patience.

To the Lady Bona, and through her to the French King,

this marriage was a deliberate insult. Nor did it improve

the temper of the befooled Warwick that Edward at once

began to shower favours on the Woodvilles, the greedy and

vulgar-minded family of his new wife, and raise them to

power in opposition to the proud Nevils. The King-maker

and Queen Margaret, whom he had ruined, now discovered

that they had a common cause, and King Lewis in his

anger was ready to back them. They swore alliance, and

to cement it Warwick betrothed his eldest daughter, the

Lady Anne Nevil, to Margaret's boy, the young Prince of

Wales.

Warwick thus stood pledged to unmake the king he had

made, and restore the House of Lancaster to the throne, in

the person either of the young prince or of the deposed Henry

who tossed to and fro like a shuttlecock in the game had

once more passed abjectly into his enemies' hands. Stealing

KING HENRY THE SIXTH 253

across the Scottish border to indulge in the sorrowful luxury

of gazing on the realm he had lost, he blundered upon a

couple of deer-keepers, who promptly secured and marched

him to London, where, on horseback, with his feet tied to

the stirrups, he was paraded thrice round the pillory and

then cast into the Tower.

Warwick could feel no real affection for anyone of the

House of Lancaster. He had a second daughter, Isabel ;

and, while playing with the hopes and demands of the

Lancastrians, he gave her in marriage to the discontented

Clarence, whom he secretly proposed to set on the throne

in Edward's place. Clarence had no scruple now in be

traying his brother. He left the court and raised a revolt

in the Midlands. Edward, marching hurriedly to cope with

it, was surprised by Warwick and Clarence one night in his

own camp, made prisoner, and confided to the keeping of

Nevil, Archbishop of York. From this captivity he was

cunningly stolen by his brother Richard, and Warwick's

schemes for crowning Clarence were defeated by the

Lancastrians, who demanded Henry's restoration and would

do nothing under that price. In the following spring a new

revolt broke out in Lincolnshire, but this found Edward

better prepared. Marching northwards, he crushed the

rebels and turned swiftly on their abettors. Clarence and

Warwick could gather no force to meet them, and were

forced to escape over-sea.

Desperate now of setting up Clarence, Warwick calmly

abandoned him and fell back on the plan which he had

taken so long to stomach of staking all on Margaret's

side. To her he engaged his word to liberate Henry, and

crossing once more to England, at a moment when a fresh

revolt had drawn Edward off to the north, he pressed on

his heels with an army which gathered so ominously that

Edward in turn was glad enough to escape out of the

kingdom and take shelter in Flanders.

He retreated, however, but to return and strike effec254

TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

tively. Warwick had indeed liberated Henry, and led him

from his cell to the throne, but the unhappy King enjoyed

a very brief freedom. He asked no more than to place the

substance of power in the joint hands of Warwick and

Clarence. The shadow was enough for him, might he

share it with Margaret and his son, whom he summoned

from France, where King Lewis was providing fresh troops

to uphold the advantage which Warwick had gained for

them.

But before they could obey, Edward whom the Duke

of Burgundy had supplied with an army landed at Ravenspurgh,

and came marching down the length of England,

making proclamation that he had surrendered his claim to

the crown, and sought only to be restored to his dukedom.

But the name of Ravenspurgh and the terms of his pro

clamation sounded ominously to those who recalled where

and how, and under what pretext, Bolingbroke had landed

and wrested the sceptre from King Richard II. By the

time he reached Nottingham sixty thousand men marched

under the White Rose. Warwick, rallying his supporters

under the Red Rose banner at Coventry, waited long but

waited in vain for Clarence to join him. Oxford, Montague,

Somerset, one after another, came trooping in with their

drums and colours ; still Clarence tarried. He had deserted

back to his brother as lightly as he had deserted from him.

Edward knew his levity ; and, too cold perhaps to feel any

deep resentment, certainly too politic to show it at this

moment, gave him an affectionate greeting. Richard

echoed it with a sneer "Welcome, Clarence; this is

indeed brother-like !"

The brothers, once more united, marched rapidly on

London, the gates of which were opened to them ; and for

the last time Henry passed back from the throne to the

Tower. Warwick followed, and the deciding battle was

fought at Barnet, on the north side of London, April i4th,

1471 (Easter Sunday). Three hours of furious and conKING

HENRY THE SIXTH 255

fused slaughter, in which the Lancastrians, amid flying

rumours of treachery and desertion, scarcely knew their

friends from their foes, left Warwick, Montague, and all

their ablest leaders dead on the field. The cause of the

Red Rose was lost.

Somerset and Oxford escaped and fled westward to join

Margaret, who on that very day had landed with her son at

Plymouth. Three weeks later, as they marched to join the

troops which the Earl of Pembroke was raising in Wales,

their army was overtaken at Tewkesbury by Edward, who

by a brilliant piece of strategy had hurried from Windsor

to intercept them. Footsore and weary, they reached

Tewkesbury on May 3rd, and took ground in a strong posi

tion close by the Abbey there. From this, on the follow

ing day, they were enticed by Richard, cut to pieces and

slaughtered like sheep. Hundreds ran screaming into the

Abbey for sanctuary, were seized, dragged forth, and

executed in batches at the town cross ; hundreds were

chased down into the River Avon and drowned. Margaret

and her son were taken and brought before Edward, who,

angered by the gallant boy's defiance, smote him across the

mouth with his iron glove. The daggers of the three

brothers silenced him more effectually. Edward struck

first. .

" What, sprawling ?" sneered Richard. " Take that,

to end your agony."

" And that," added Clarence,

" for

twitting me with perjury."

" Kill me too!" pleaded Mar

garet, broken at last, as his blood ran from their daggers.

"

Marry, that will I." Richard was ready, but Edward held

his hand. When she recovered from her swoon and would

have besought him again, Richard had galloped from the

field. " The Tower ! The Tower !" had been his last

whisper in Clarence's ear. " He's sudden, when a thing

comes into his head," was Edward's cynical comment when

Clarence told him.

Henry sat reading in his cell in the Tower, when Richard

was announced and entered with a sneersneering smile. The sad

-----------------------------------------

256 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

King knew his errand at once. His eyes were opened ; he

saw that death had entered with Richard and stood behind

his crooked shoulder; and he saw in that crooked figure

incarnate the final curse begotten in the long struggle and

bred for the blight of all its shadow was to fall upon. His

lips were opened too, and he prophesied. Richard leaped

on him with his dagger.

" For this I was ordained among

other things !" he snarled, and drove home the blow.

"

Ay, and for much more slaughter to come," gasped Henry :

" God forgive my sins, and thee !" He was dead ; but

Richard, like a wild beast mad with the taste of blood,

struck again and again.

" Down down to hell, and say I

sent thee !" he growled over the body.

Richard II. was avenged. The curse against which

Henry V. prayed before Agincourt had overtaken the House

of Lancaster at length, and was fulfilled. But the curse

on the House of York was yet to fall. At Westminster

Edward could feel himself secure ; could turn all his

thoughts to pleasure and courtly shows. Margaret was

banished ; his strong foes, from Warwick downward, were

dead one and all. A son had been born to inherit the

crown. He bade his two brothers kiss their nephew.

Clarence and Richard bent over the child in turn. We

shall see that child again with Richard's shadow bent above

him and over-arching.

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